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Post by robeiae on Feb 14, 2018 9:27:55 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2018 9:50:19 GMT -5
Actually, I think it's stupid with both of them, not just because they are truly great novels, but also because they would make amazing openers for serious discussions about the history of race issues in this country.
Adding in books by e.g., Toni Morrison should happen, too. I know there's only so much room in a curriculum, but I also know I always found time to read about two or three times what was required for school.
At any rate, even if you want to get rid of the books to make room for others, I completely disagree with the reasons for getting rid of them. We should be confronting and discussing our history, not hushing it up and pretending it didn't happen.
To note, despite or perhaps because of any oppressive language in Huck Finn, the characters the reader cares about and roots for are Jim and Huck -- the slave seeking freedom and the outcast boy helping him and escaping his own abusive father. Ditto for TKAM -- you are not sympathizing with the racists.
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Post by prozyan on Feb 14, 2018 19:07:03 GMT -5
At any rate, even if you want to get rid of the books to make room for others, I completely disagree with the reasons for getting rid of them. We should be confronting and discussing our history, not hushing it up and pretending it didn't happen. I could not agree more with this. It seems lately anything that causes anyone the slightest bit of discomfort goes on a banned list of some sort. |
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Post by Don on Feb 14, 2018 20:09:25 GMT -5
Oceania always been at war with Eastasia.
Oceania has always been a post-racist society.
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an operations manual.
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Post by Amadan on Feb 17, 2018 11:53:04 GMT -5
Oceania always been at war with Eastasia. Oceania has always been a post-racist society. 1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an operations manual. Don, come on. Rob pointed out in his OP that this was a curriculum decision, not a banning. There is a big difference, one I would think a libertarian would recognize, between saying "We'll use something else in our required reading list" and actually taking them out of the school library. Do I think both books are worthy of being included and discussed? Yes, but that doesn't mean they are the only suitable choices. I don't agree with the decision to remove them, but we're talking about one school district here. Every school district has different reading lists. I never read either To Kill a Mockingbird or Tom Sawyer in school, because neither one ever appeared on our reading lists, and this was long before there was such concern over "oppressive language." Yeah, I think they are missing the point by trying to avoid books in which characters express racist sentiments. That said, I heard one legitimate point made by some commentator at one point - in theory, the abundant use of n-bombs in Tom Sawyer is an indicator of the time and place in which the story is being told and kids should know about that. In practice, how many teachers do you actually trust to be able to responsibly manage a classroom discussion in which 12-year-olds are gleefully reading "nigger nigger nigger" out loud? Asking you in particular, Don, Mr. "Gummint Education is fraud/waste/abuse" - you really have such a high opinion of the average public school teacher? (There are counter-arguments. Yes. But I think it's a fair point.) |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 17, 2018 12:14:51 GMT -5
I do concur with Amadan that a lot of teachers might not handle the discussion well. I also agree that other books might be equally worthy of being included in the curriculum. I merely disagree with the reasoning implied in the OP -- i.e., "oh, these books need to be shoved on the scrap heap forever and let's pretend this country does not have an appallingly racist past."
Done right, a discussion of Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird in the context of racism in our country could be amazingly valuable. I vividly remember my mother doing so with me. (As I think I've mentioned, she read Huck Finn to us chapter by chapter when I was six years old. That's how I learned our country once had slaves. I can recall being absolutely horrified that someone sold Jim's family and that Jim had to run away to try to recover them, and that people would try to stop him. Jim's little deaf daughter was extremely vivid to me at that age, even though she is mentioned in only one chapter, and my sympathy for Jim and his family is my most vivid takeaway from the book. I also was pissed off as hell at Tom Sawyer's* shenanigans in that book. Tom turned Jim's freedom into a game, and even the happy ending didn't make that right for me. Christ, Jim was free that whole time, and could have been out trying to find his family, and Tom is baking ropes into pies and releasing rats into Jim's cabin? What the holy fuck? (As an adult, that portion of the book is the part I find hard to forgive Twain for. Clearly, Twain was sympathetic to Jim and understood the stakes -- hence why Huck comes to understand them, hence why the book and characters stood the test of time. But then fucking Tom Sawyer enters the picture and Twain gets all mired in Tom's "fun" hijinx. Yeah, fuck that noise. I'm sure Twain's audience at the time looooved that part, and I'm sure Twain himself thought it was harmless since he knows Jim is going to be free at the end of it and that Tom knows it too. But seriously, fuck that noise -- I wish he'd just had Tom arrive at his aunt's house and indignantly announce that Jim was a free man. ) She also put into context the parts of the book where Huck is struggling with whether he should be turning Jim in, and his final decision "well, then, I'll go to hell." I truly think her reading that book to me and putting it in context was extremely valuable for me.
But all of that powerful reaction on my part is in large part, I think, from the way my mother discussed the book with me -- I was only six, and I'm not sure I would have registered it the same way if she'd characterized that as being "fun." Indeed, I'm pretty certain I would not.
Done wrong, or if the books are studied in schools without such a discussion, yeah, much less worthwhile -- possibly even harmful. I absolutely don't think it should be assumed that kids will have the historical knowledge, maturity, and perspective to put the language and themes in the books in context on their own., or that their parents will help them do so. They might well, as Amadan notes, gleefully jump all over the racist themes in utterly the wrong way. And no, I don't think every teacher and every parent is capable of leading such a discussion.
What I would like to see is a high school teacher who IS capable and IS interested in leading such a discussion given the freedom to include the books and the discussion in their curriculum.
ETA:
I actually hate the character of Tom Sawyer generally. Insufferably smug manipulative insensitive selfish domineering little shithead. I forgive Huck for knuckling under to him only because Huck was not only just a kid himself, but indeed was an abused kid from a severely deprived childhood growing up in a society that put the Tom Sawyers far above him. What was amazing was that Huck had as much humanity, innate decency, and empathy in him as he did, given his upbringing and the world around him. He could easily have been a little sociopath, or someone who turned Jim in for a reward and felt virtuous for doing it -- indeed, in his world, that WAS the virtuous thing to do.
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